The urban planning crisis that hit the city of Milan in recent months constitutes one of the administrative emergencies more relevant and structured than the contemporary national framework. It manifested itself through a systemic blockade of the building sectorone prolonged paralysis of the competent municipal offices and a widespread state of legal uncertainty which led to the suspension of hundreds of construction sites, the slowdown of investments and the loss of confidence of citizens and economic operators in the ability of the local administration to guarantee the regular management of the territory.
In this context lies the Bill no. 1671presented in recent days and containing “Urgent provisions to overcome the building and urban planning crisis in the city of Milan”. The provision aims to introduce a mechanism of extraordinary intervention of a temporary natureentrusted to a figure commissioner appointed by the governmentcapable of overcoming the procedural block and ensuring, within certain times, the definition of suspended or irregular building practices.
There ratio of the Bill is based on the assumption, made explicit in the explanatory report, that theordinary administrative structure of the Municipality of Milan is not today able to cope, on its own, with the mass of pending disputes, suspensions and investigations which have made the city’s urban planning machine effectively inoperative. The legislator, recognizing the exceptional nature of this situation, deems it necessary to substitutive intervention of the Stateaimed at guaranteeing administrative functionality through the attribution of extraordinary powers to a Special Commissioner of the Governmentidentified as third and neutral subject with respect to conflicting interests.
Legislative Decree 1671 identifies three levels of emergency which justify the use of exceptional powers. The first level consists of urban planning stalemate and from administrative paralysis of municipal offices, determined by a set of factors that include ongoing judicial investigations, organizational deficiencies and internal management difficulties, with structural delays in processing building procedures and the impossibility of providing timely responses to citizens and businesses.
The second level concerns thesocio-economic impact on families and individuals who have purchased real estate units in good faith in buildings that are the subject of disputed qualifications, who today find themselves deprived of the possibility of fully disposing of their property and the related asset value.
The third level concerns the macroeconomic and environmental impact of the crisis, which affects the urban regenerationon the stability of the real estate market and on overall quality of the built environmentcausing a prejudice to the public interest in the correct and orderly development of the city territory.
The legislative proposal to this triple emergency is represented by the institution of Extraordinary Government Commissioner for Milancentral figure of the entire bill. There appointment of the Commissioner must happen by fifteen days from the entry into force of the law, through decree of the President of the Council of Ministersup proposal from the Minister of Infrastructure and Transportheard the President of the Lombardy Region.
The mandate has a fixed duration and expires on December 31, 2027confirming the exceptional and non-permanent nature of the assignment. The legislator identifies rigorous requirements: the Commissioner must possess Proven managerial and administrative experience and not find yourself in situations of conflict of interestbeing able to also be chosen between subjects external to public administrationin order to enhance technical and managerial skills capable of ensuring effective, independent and result-oriented management.
This approach, consistent with the practice of the most recent commissioner experiences in the infrastructure sector, aims to guarantee professionalism and decision-making autonomypreventing the same inefficiencies that generated the crisis from reproducing within the recovery mechanism.
The Extraordinary Commissioner exercises a character function technical-administrative with two main tasks: identifying the building interventions carried out or started starting from 2018 in the municipal area of Milan whose building permits have been issued or have been tacitly formed in the absence of the legal requirements and apply, for each of them, one proportionate financial penalty to the value of the works or their parts, determined in an amount equal to one tenth of the market value of the works themselves, as estimated byRevenue Agency in agreement with the municipal administration.
The mechanism outlined is based on the principle of proportionality and restorative function of the sanction, which takes on the value of an instrument of administrative regularization. Article 1, paragraph 2, of the bill establishes that the full payment of the fine produces the same administrative and civil effects as permission to build in amnestypursuant to article 36 of Presidential Decree 6 June 2001, n. 380.
The healing effect derives automatically from the pecuniary fulfillment, without the need for further authorization measures, guaranteeing certainty and simplification. It is also specified that the administrative regularization does not extinguish any criminal liabilitywhich remain the responsibility of thejudicial authorityin accordance with the principle of autonomy of the different spheres of responsibility.
The intervention, from an operational point of view, is supported by a dedicated administrative structure composed of a maximum of seven staff unitsof which one with a non-general managerial qualification and six of non-managerial level, selected from among public administration personnel pursuant to article 1, paragraph 2, of the legislative decree 30 March 2001, n. 165. Within this quota, up to three external experts or consultantseven those outside the public administration, with proven experience, with compensation not exceeding fifty thousand euros per year.
Staff coming from other administrations will be placed in leadership position or out of role and the structure will cease its functions at the same time as the commissioner’s mandate expires. The additional economic treatment will be equivalent to that of the company’s staff Presidency of the Council of Ministersensuring budget uniformity and neutrality.
From a financial point of view, the bill is based on a principle of economic self-sufficiency. All the operating expenses of the commissioner structureincluding the compensation of the Commissioner and staff, will be covered by proceeds of the sanctions imposed; if these proceeds are not sufficient, the law provides for the possibility of drawing on the funds already acquired by the Municipality of Milan by way of construction contributions paid for the same buildings subject to regularization.
To guarantee the management transparencyone is established special accounting in the name of the Extraordinary Commissionerinto which the revenues deriving from sanctions and any municipal resources used in a subsidiary manner will flow. The provision is expressly qualified as neutral for public financessince it does not determine new or greater burdens for the State.
This structure guarantees economic balance, traceability And accounting controlin accordance with the principles of administrative responsibility.
From a substantial point of view, the Legislative Decree 1671 pursues the restoration of administrative legality and the reactivation of the building cycle Milanese through a limited and proportionate extraordinary intervention. There introduced regularization does not have a rewarding nature but an ordering function: it allows you to re-establish the legal certainty of administrative relations and to give back marketability of propertieswhile ensuring the collection of public resources as compensation.
The expected effects are projected on three levels. On the floor legalthe norm should return stability of building documents And certainty to the market; on the floor economicshould allow the resumption of construction sites and the restart of the construction supply chain; on the floor administrativeit should lighten the burden of municipal offices and strengthen the capacity of the administration to plan and control the territory.
The Legislative Decree 1671 therefore falls in line with the Italian commissioner traditionin which the extraordinary intervention is conceived as tool for guaranteeing the public interest in the presence of a temporary inefficiency of the ordinary apparatus. The institution of the Extraordinary Commissioner for the city of Milan constitutes a model balanced exercise of the Government’s substitutive powers pursuant to article 120 of Constitutionbeing limited in time, aimed at restoration of legality and founded on a precise scope of skills.
The adoption of this figure, in a phase of serious administrative crisis, would respond to the need to ensure the continuity of public actionof its good performance (art. 97 of the Constitution) and the safeguarding the general interestwithout permanently altering theautonomy of the local authoritygiving back certainty, operability and trust to the entire sector.